The Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.

JANUARY 5–17 (18–30), 1912

THE CHARACTER AND ORGANISATIONAL FORMS
OF PARTY WORK

Recognisingthat the experience of the past three years has undoubtedly
confirmed the main provisions of the resolution on the problem of
organisation carried by the December (1908) Conference, and assuming that
the new upswing of the working-class movement makes possible the further
development of organisational forms of Party work alongthe lines indicated therein, i.e., by the formation of illegal
Social-Democratic nuclei surrounded by as wide a network as possible of
every kind of legal workers’ associations,

TheConference considers that:

(1)Itis essential for illegal Party organisations to participate
actively in the leadership of theeconomic struggle(strikes,
strike committees, etc.), and to ensure co-operation in this sphere between
the illegal Party nuclei and the trade unions, in particular with the
S.D. nuclei in the trade unions, and also with various leaders of the trade
union movement;

(2)Itis desirable that S.D. nuclei in unions organised on anindustrialbasis should, whenever local conditions permit,
function inconjuctionwith Party branches
organised on aterritorialbasis;

(3)Itis essential for the maximum possible initiative to be shown in
the organisation of S.D. work in legally existing associations—unions,
reading rooms, libraries, various types of workers’ entertainment
societies, the circulation of the trade union journals and the guidance of
the trade union press in the spirit of Marxism; the use of the Duma
speeches of the S.D. members, the training of workers to become legal
lecturers, the creation (in connection with the elections to the Fourth
Duma) of workers’ and other voters’ committees for each district, each
street, etc., and the organisation of Social-Democratic campaigns ill
connection with the elections to municipal bodies, etc.;

(4)Itis essential to make special efforts to strengthen and increase
the number of illegal Party nuclei, and to seek for new organisational
forms for them of the greatest possible flexibility, to establish and
strengthen leading illegal Party organisations in every town and to
propagate such forms of mass illegal organisations as “exchanges”,
factory Party meetings, and so on;

(5)Itis desirable to draw the study circles into everydaypracticalwork—the distribution of illegal Social-Democratic and
legal Marxist literature, and so on;

(6)Itis essential to bear in mind that systematic agitation through
S.D. literature and particularly the regular distribution of the illegal
Party paper, issued frequently and regularly can have a tremendous
significance for theestablishment of organisational links, both between the illegal nuclei, and
between the S.D. nuclei in legally existing workers’ associations.